Consequences of Swidden Transitions for Crop and Fallow Biodiversity in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Swidden agriculture, once the dominant form of land use throughout the uplands and much of the lowlands of Southeast Asia, is being replaced by other land uses. While change and adaptation are inherent to swiddening, the current rapid and widespread transitions are unprecedented. In this paper we review some recent findings on changes in biodiversity, especially plant diversity at various scales, as swidden farming is replaced by other land uses. We focus particularly on two areas of Southeast Asia:northern Thailand and West Kalimantan. We examine actual and potential changes in the diversity of crops that characterize regional swidden systems, as well as that of the spontaneously occurring plants that appear in swidden fields and fallows. Severe declines in plant diversity have been observed in most areas and at most spatial scales when swidden is replaced by permanent land use systems. However, shifts away from swidden agriculture do not invariably result in drastic declines or losses of biological diversity, but may maintain or even enhance it, particularly at finer spatial scales. We suggest that further research is necessary to understand the effects of swidden transitions on biodiversity.

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

“…Ordinarily, swidden cultivation is mainly practiced by the ethnic minority groups settled in inaccessible uplands [139]. The other is the need to enhance the ecosystem services of biological diversity preservation [64,140]. It thus raises a series of questions which need further in-depth research for swidden agricultural systems.…”

“…In addition, SEA is one of the three major tropical forest regions [145] and is endowed with extremely rich biodiversity [146]. The pressing problems to be answered are how, in what ways, and to what extent will these unprecedented transitions pose impacts on swidden farmers' livelihoods [65] and cultural identity [66], biological diversity and ecosystem services [64,140].…”

“…In the review paper, we searched the Google Scholar with the following key words: swidden, swidden agriculture, swidden farming, swidden cultivation, swidden system, swidden practice, shifting cultivation and slash and burn. Only data published in peer reviewed journals (140), specialized books (four), reports (four), proceedings (three), Ph.D. dissertation (one) on this traditional farming system with a longitudinal way were selected. Among them, a total of 92 publications were analyzed in SEA, specifically, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines.…”

Farmers’ tales: adaptive strategies for agricultural commercialisation and food and nutrition security in Myanmar

“…Farmers were aware of some adverse effects of commercial agriculture and were implementing responses to limit environmental consequences especially regarding the increased use of agricultural chemicals (organic agriculture). Overall, the process of commercialisation did not bring to a decline in the crop diversity per household as instead observed by Rerkasem et al (2009). Effects of mechanisation could not have been studied, since in the research area most of the respondents were still using animal traction.…”

“…Where property rights are unclear phenomenon such as land grabbing can take place. Also, commercialisation may lead to a decline in crop diversity for households (Rerkasem et al, 2009). In some cases, farmer that invested in cash crop resulted worse off in terms of nutritional status than subsistence farmers (Anderman & Remands, 2014).…”